Bureau of Labor Statistics

So, a few things have caught my attention over the last couple of days. None of them are related. They’re all just sort or random things I noticed in passing.

In response to the SJW freak-out over the owner of Memories Pizza in Indiana, Dana Loesch started a GoFundMe for the pizza shop that got over $800,000 in pledges. This made one SJW named John Furr unhappy.

So, Mr. Furr tweeted how upset he was that GoFundMe allowed this project to be accepted and completed. He’s so upset that, even though he’s used the site for his prog-lefty fundraising, he’s going to boycott them from now on. Sure, he found the site useful to dredge up what money he could from his SJW sympathizers, but now that someone with an opposing political view has used the site, it’s become too corrupted to have anything to do with.

Apparently, it’s not enough for GoFundMe to be neutral in this political issue, and go about their business of allowing anyone to needs funding within their TOS to obtain it. Neutrality, is, in his view, just as evil as opposition in his quest for transcendental justice, I guess.

Think about what that implies. Either you give full-blown support to the appropriate Lefty causes or you’re simply an enemy. That’s the totalitarian face of the progressive Left. They aren’t interested in “tolerance”. They require approval. If you don’t want to weigh in and stand on the sidelines…well, that’s not good enough. You’re either all-in or you’re a class traitor. So, don’t kid yourself that they won’t come for you if they obtain the power to do so. You won’t get to be left alone.

These SJWs are totalitarians who demand a rigid conformity, and demonize anyone who won’t mouth the appropriate political line.

The Left could not be more effective at fomenting civil war in this country if they were trying to do so.

Bill O’Reilly’s book, Killing Jesus, has been made into a movie, and they showed it on FOXNews over the Easter weekend. It was weird.

In the movie, Jesus kind of announces himself to the world by having Peter haul in a butt-load of fish in a single cast. Nobody had seen anything like it. Anyway, the Sanhedrin convinces Pilate to crucify Jesus, and he’s put in the tomb, with the High Priest asking for Roman soldiers to guard the tomb to ensure the disciples don’t steal the body and claim he came back from the dead.

A couple of days later, some folks go to the tomb, where the stone has been rolled away, and the corpse is gone, with an empty shroud just laying there. The very next scene, Peter is back in Galilee, fishing, and looking all sad and puppy-like. Then, a whole bunch of fish swim into his net. He hauls in his record catch, and yells over to one of the other disciples, “He has returned!” Except that he, you know, hadn’t. So, basically, the whole Resurrection deal was just…disappeared from the movie.

Now, look, the Resurrection is kind of a Big Deal in Christianity. One might almost say that Christianity without the Resurrection is pointless. I mean, if you’re gonna do a Jesus movie, and play it on Easter Frickin’ Sunday, you might think that some mention would be made of the couple of hundred people or so whom the Bible asserts actually saw and spoke with Jesus for about a month after the crucifixion, or watched him fly up into heaven. But, you’d be wrong. The body just disappeared—with hints that the disciples took it—and the whole resurrection deal was symbolic thing, rather than Resurrected Jesus walking up to people and saying, “Yeah, It’s me. No really, poke my spear-holes of you don’t believe me!”

I found it odd that this Killing Jesus deal was hyped as some sort of authoritative look at Jesus life, and they just elided the whole Resurrection thing away. On Easter Sunday.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia made a strange statement. They are suspending their report on state-level leading and coincident indicators. Why?

The recent benchmark data revisions from the Bureau of Labor Statistics produced greater changes to the Philadelphia Fed’s estimating methodology than are typical. While estimates for most states do appear to be reasonable, those for some states are not.

In other words, the BLS has “adjusted” the data so badly that they don’t make any sense, and the Fed can’t use them to produce the state leading and coincident indicators index. They are, in short, worthless. The BLS, of course, says they give us the real scoop, without any of that nasty political data massaging.

Apparently, the Philly Fed disagrees.

Sally Kohn is an NYU law school graduate. But, I’m going to assume it was the NYU School of Legal Things and Stuff for Kids That Don’t Think Too Good, because today she wrote this:

You could also argue that the government is forcing you to drive below the speed limit or wear a seatbelt in your car. But it’s not. There isn’t a police officer holding a gun to your head literally forcing you to buckle up. In fact, you are 100 percent free to speed and not wear your seatbelt—and simply deal with the consequences if you’re pulled over. Is the threat of the fine for breaking the law amount to “forcing” you to follow the law? No.

This definition of “force” contravenes literally everything we know about how law—and language—works. The whole point of having laws is to engage you with whatever force is necessary to stop you from, or punishing you for, disobeying them. You can’t even spell “law enforcement” without “force”.

It certainly wouldn’t surprise me given the unsettled business climate. And, in fact, that’s what the Bureau of Economic Analysis is reporting – a record 1.6 trillion is being held while companies sort out what is happening in the business and financial sectors. That, of course, means it isn’t being spent on hiring. But there’s another reason, other than the unsettled business climate that is keeping corporations from hiring:

“Companies slashed their work forces and now find that they could function far more resourcefully than they ever realized possible,” Bianco said. “If anything, we could start to see some of the money being used to expand overseas or to acquire other companies. In either case, that does not bode well for job creation. In fact, mergers lead to job reductions unfortunately.”

A nice way of saying, it may get worse. Companies have become more efficient and productive. Because of that, most experts I’ve read expect the national unemployment rate – the U3 – to remain in the 9% area throughout the year. Government efforts to spur hiring haven’t amounted to much:

Alan Krueger, assistant secretary for economic policy at the US Department of the Treasury, points out that President Obama recently signed a jobs creation act known as HIRE which includes a variety of incentives. HIRE, for example, exempts companies from paying social security payroll tax if they hire someone who has been out of work for more than two months, and offers them a $1000 cash bonus if they retain the worker for a full year.

That’s not going to tip the scales and cause a company to hire if solid business reasons don’t dictate such action. And, as pointed out in the first cite, there’s a very good reason, at least at this point, not to hire – companies have learned to live and, in some cases, prosper without the employees they slashed.

One of the great surprises of the economic downturn that began 27 months ago is this: Businesses are producing only 3 percent fewer goods and services than they were at the end of 2007, yet Americans are working nearly 10 percent fewer hours because of a mix of layoffs and cutbacks in the workweek.

That means high-level gains in productivity — which in the long run is the key to a higher standard of living but in the short run contributes to sky-high unemployment. So long as employers can squeeze dramatically higher output from every worker, they won’t need to hire again despite the growing economy.

And right now, employers are indeed doing more with less and are not going to be inclined to hire more employees until it is clear that demand for their product is up, will continue to grow and requires more employees to produce their product and fulfill the consumer’s demand.

The Employment report has shown good numbers throughout March today release but not as good as expected by market. NFP data has posted 162.000 new jobs in march, with a revision in the previous data to -14.000 from -36.000 in February. Market expectations were 187.000 new jobs in March. Unemployment rate remains at 9.7% in March, the same February number.

Temporary help services and health care continued to add jobs over the month. Employment in federal government also rose, reflecting the hiring of temporary workers for Census 2010. Employment continued to decline in financial activities and in information.

So while +162,000 is obviously better than -162,000, the numbers aren’t really all that solid. Also remember that our economy requires about 120,000 to 140,000 new jobs a month just to offset job loses elsewhere and maintain a static unemployment percentage. And that’s pretty much what this month’s numbers show us and is the reason the unemployment percentage has remained static. What would give us a truer picture of the rate is to remove the census hiring from the numbers. My guess is we’d still be well below the 120,000 to 140,000 threshold necessary to drop that rate. But what the last three months may indicate is the labor market is finally bottoming out.

The point, of course, is that corporations are still in a position, driven by increases in productivity and lack of demand as well as an unsettled business environment, not to increase hiring any time soon. The money corporations are sitting on, as noted, is going to go somewhere – most likely to increased dividends or mergers. And mergers actually mean fewer jobs, not more. Until companies see increased, well-defined and sustainable growth in demand to the point they can’t handle it with their present level of employees, they’re not going to hire no matter how many “jobs” bills Congress passes and Obama signs.